Desire of the Beast
by Lady Dernhelm
Summary: A short, semi-introspective piece taking place in the First Age: Ungoliant waits upon the birth of her children, and, subsequently, her newest prey.


Desire of the Beast

The darkness consumed her. There was light and there was shadow, but it was the blackness, pure and unadulterated, that she craved, and it was the blackness that she would have.

She retreated deeper into the cavern. The mountain floor became rougher beneath her many feet but she felt no pain. Her flesh was too tough to be so easily injured. A protrusion of stone pressed into her thick, plump abdomen and raising a leg she pushed it out of the cavern wall, casting it to the earth beneath her to be trampled by her claws. The mountain groaned under the burden of her passage. Parts of this cavern, she knew, were weak and treacherous and they threatened to collapse beneath her tremendous weight, but she cared not. Let it fall. It was mere earth and could not harm her. If the stone gave out she would climb out of its ruin undeterred, and would continue onward toward her destination. 

She did not fear the earth or the darkness. They were nothing to her. She was Ungoliant the Great, the Lady of All That Was Dark, the Destroyer of the Trees and the consort of Melkor himself, and there was nothing under the skies of creation that could hinder her.

The passage was almost too small for her. Several times she was forced to draw her legs against her body in order to pull herself through a narrow region of the cave, and once the low roof caught the great bulk of her abdomen. She hissed, she cursed in a tongue that was not truly a language at all, composed of the unearthly and animalistic gruntings she was able to spit forth from her terrible jaws, and with the whine of bruising flesh she dragged herself under it. It, too, should fall, she decided. She did not remember it having been so low when last she had come this far into the darkened cave, but she had increased in size since then, having devoured another countless amount of things that dared crawl before her. She grew with each meal and the mass of her body would not be lessened ever again. She had become far too large, and with her obesity came lethargy. She wondered vaguely if she would ever grow so large that the mountain itself would no longer contain her. The fantasy was not an unpleasant one. The earth would tremble beneath her. The stone about her, black and chilled by the bowels of the world, would crack, admitting light into places that had never before known the sun. Her flesh would strain against the rock until its very foundations crumbled around her, and she would be revealed in all her glory, a creature more immense than the ancient mountains themselves. All would bow before her, even the fool Melkor, who had once dared to oppose her. All would offer their lives and the lives of their children to her ravenous maw. She would be known in their pitiful minds for what she truly was: Ungoliant the Great, Ungoliant the Mother of Despair, the Devourer of Light. She would be a goddess unto them. 

But the fulfillment of these desires was yet distant. The mountain passage was tight about her but not yet ready to break. It would soon feel even smaller, though. Her sole intention for the journey deep into the mountain was to feed, though she knew it would be several hours before she was given that opportunity: the creatures upon which she had come to feed had not yet been born. 

She pulled herself further into the depths of the cave, running her claws over the dusty rock and shuddering at the pleasant sound they made. She would have devoured the stone itself had it been edible, full of blood and life. She would scratch at it until at last her claws drew the vital liquid, and when she could resist the urge no longer, she would drive her great fangs into it, sucking it dry. Often when she came here she found it almost saddening that she could not eat this great fortress, that the stone offered her no sustenance, and no matter how many passes she made over it with the sharpened bony edges of her clawed feet she would find only more stone, and the only veins that would open to her were those of gold and of silver. She had no use for such things. Wealth meant nothing to her, nor did the dominion of anything that lived other than herself. She cared only to feed. Her crown was that of skulls, her scepter the spines for which her body had no use and had vomited forth in a pool of dark, gelatinous bile and bones. 

A strand of gossamer brushed across her hideous face, fluttering over her many eyes. The beginning of her web was near. She had spun it loosely, having no need to fear that anything would come upon it. Nothing lived so deep in this darkness but she to be trapped in it, and the small objects she had meant to cover would be undisturbed. 

The cavern widened before her. Here her web began, and here it was that she could rest. Her prey waited nearby, in unseeing silence. Soon she would spring upon it, but not yet.

She lowered herself to the chilled earth, tucking her long legs beneath her heavy bulk. The cavern moaned about her, creaking dangerously under the burden of her full weight. She released a hissing sigh. Her fangs moved against each other briefly, clicking and scraping, awaiting the blood that would soon be drawn into them. Her eyes fixed upon the direction in which her quarry lay, though she was blind in this impenetrable darkness, and her body heaved in anticipation, shuddering deliciously. The wait would be difficult, but she was not an impatient creature. She had waited so long for this…a few more hours was nothing to her. 

The eggs were covered in a thin gauze of silk, held together as tightly as though she had intentionally laid them as such. The delicate web she had woven over them was merely a product of her own instinct. She did not care for the children that waited within the small orbs; she had no maternal desires. Her offspring had only one use for her, and it was for that singular purpose that she kept vigil over them.

She despised her children. She always had, from the first time one of her eggs had broken open to reveal a tiny creature so like herself but lacking in her tremendous size, merely as tall as an underfed horse. Their existence irritated her. They crawled about her dwelling mindlessly, exploring in the dark until at last they found her. They latched onto her with their tiny claws, chirping as a bird might and hissing at each other when in their stupidity they collided. They traveled over the width of her body, biting and scratching as they so chose, forsaking utterly the fact that she had given them life and would, were it not for the virtue of her patience, have devoured them before they had even hatched. Her eyes were objects of great fascination to them, and her mandible a cave for their own ventures. Sometimes an unfortunate one would, while attempting foolishly to squeeze beneath her belly, impale itself upon her thick sting, thus ending its own life. It was in disdain that she would pry its limp body away, kicking at it with her hindmost legs until at last it fell. She felt no pity for them. They were fools, all of them, mere animals that were unworthy of her motherhood. And yet they served a purpose, and for that purpose she would mother a litter of them a thousand times over and again. 

Her mates she hated almost equally. They would come to her when her malice seemed outwardly to wane, creeping slowly so as not to rouse her fierce anger, always prepared to flee should she become defensive. They were crawling, pathetic things that comprehended not the vastness of her existence. She was not Ungoliant the Great to them; she was not even Ungoliant. She was merely a female of a species that they thought similar to their own, a receptacle for their instinctive actions. And yet she did not turn them away. She raised up upon her legs willingly, presenting her obese underside, and endured those brief moments of contact with no sign at all of her disdain, her hatred. But when her mate was done she sprang upon him, first inserting her sting and then her fangs, and finally taking the body itself into her great jaws. Little or nothing was left behind. 

She suffered them for the sake of her hunger. Her mate provided a dainty enough meal in exchange that she birth the eggs to which he had added his own vitality. And when they hatched, when those pitiful children came forth, she devoured them in wicked bliss, sucking out the juices of their bodies until they were but desiccated husks for her to either kick into the abyss of the mountain or eat. Hundreds she birthed and hundreds she ate, allowing only a precious few to escape her in those initial moments. Those few were more deserving of life than the others, for they were sufficiently like unto herself in that they knew what awaited them should they remain. But her mercy was not eternal, and when again she ventured out into the light she sought them, murdering them one by one until finally she had feasted upon the last of her brood. 

Her young provided a meal so succulent it was scarcely matched, and it was for this and this alone that she continued to bring them forth. 

The sound of ripping tissue broke the silence of the cavern. Something chirped in the darkness. She shuddered again at this, waiting, waiting…

A small creature, no greater than a pony, climbed out of the bundled eggs, breaking through the protection of her web with only slight effort. In the blinding dark she could not see it, but she could hear its progress, the scraping of its small claws against the gossamer and the stone. Slowly it made its way to her, chirping interrogatively, and with another sighing hiss she answered it. _Yes, little one, come to me, yes, mine, my child, mine…_

She felt its tiny foot graze against her leg. Its claw cut her flesh. She hissed at it again and swatted it away, only to have her actions answered by the pathetic thing creeping toward her once more. 

Others joined it. The small eggs burst open and quickly they abandoned them, journeying forth to locate their mother. She knew not what they sought from her. She had nothing to offer them. She could not give them succor; she could not feed them or nurture them. And she had nothing to teach them, save the reverence for her that they would know in the moment before they felt the pain of her sting…

Some of her brood resembled her more than others. This happened in each birth: there were those that were as she, formed as an animal but greater than the lowly creatures of the earth, graced with a higher intelligence and a consciousness that far exceeded that of a base thing, and those that were as their fathers had been, hideous and foolish animals that knew only to hunt and to breed. Not all of them were clawed; not all of them had eyes surpassing the number of most creatures such as themselves. Many of them lacked the powerful jaws she had incorporated into her form when first she had taken it. They were foul, all of them, unnatural combinations of herself and her imbecilic mates. She suffered the fewest of them to live only for the sustenance she took from their fattened bodies. 

At last her patience became thin, and raising her terrible bulk from the cool dust of the earth she moved to strike. Those nearest her died quickly and easily enough, falling victim to her sting or to her large fangs. They squealed as she pierced their fragile flesh, they struggled beneath her even as she began to suck from them the succulence of their very lives, and in their futile struggles she found bliss such as she had rarely ever known. It was her own blood she drank; it was her own voice that cried out to her in a primitive plea for mercy. She tasted the darkness that lay within her, passed on to these meek creatures undeserving of her magnitude and she reveled in it, basked in it as though it were the sweetest thing upon the earth. Perhaps it was. What else could equal the blackness of her own heart? What else could rival the malice that had grown within her from the beginning of her existence? Melkor would pride himself in thinking that his was the greater but she knew this to be a lie, nothing more than a fantasy constructed to make greater the pleasure he took in his own actions. He had imparted his influence to the Song in the Beginning and he had cast doubt into the minds of all created around him, but what were these accomplishments in light of her own? It was she who had drawn out the light of the accursed Trees and it was she who had bowed to nothing and no one. Let him marvel at his own delusions; the truth was hers, and it nested in her insatiable belly. 

And she could taste it in each of them, her ungrateful children, her atrocious brood, the wickedness of each fell deed and all the labors she had wrought. What had passed out of her in the birthing of their tremulous eggs she took back into herself. She drained their small bodies even as they fought against her and when they were but shells she took them into her mouth, tearing them apart and swallowing them even as some continued to spasm. There were hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands, but she would not tire of this violent consumption. Nothing could sate her gluttony. 

A few of them crept by her when they belatedly realized their fate should they remain; she felt them crawling around her, crawling _over_ her, searching for the passage that would lead them away from her. She did not care. They would go out into the world and those that were not killed by some lesser creature would grow strong and fat as she, and when they did she would find them. 

And then as quickly as her feast began, it ended. The last of her remaining children she devoured, leaving only a slender leg or a claw to mark their former existence. The remnants of their eggs she would let rot away with time. 

She lay again upon the cold of the cavern floor, splaying her legs about her rather lethargically. In the darkness, she rested. Her large eyes became clouded, and the state into which she slowly fell so resembled sleep that if anything had come upon her, perhaps exploring the mountain, it would undoubtedly deem it safe to pass her by. 

She did not know how long she lay like this. Perhaps it was only a few hours, perhaps a matter of days. When she awoke she was painfully aware that she was still in the place where she had given birth to the despicable little animals that were a blessing to her hunger and a curse to her impatience. A shudder wracked her bloated body; a deep hiss like a groan passed through her throat. To be here so long after such a kill disgusted her. 

She rose from the ground and retreated through the same passage through which she had come earlier to feed. The cavern roof was even lower this time, and bracing the hulk of her abdomen for impact she threw herself against the stone. It yielded to her weight quite easily. 

The opening of the tunnel came into view after only an hour's labor, but as she neared it she realized that she was not alone. A shadow flickered once over the opening; a fleeting hiss, a voice so much like her own, echoed throughout the dark hollow. One of the insolent whelps, perhaps? One so lacking in intelligence that it lingered outside, unaware that it was still far from being safe? 

Her fangs clacked together; her jaw worked beneath them. She found the prospect of this quite delicious. 

And yet when at last she reached the opening, the young one was not to be seen. She paused, vaguely confused, and suddenly aware that it might not have been her child that she had seen at all but some other thing with more stealth even than she. 

Her hesitation did not last long. She felt it approaching, scaling the rock beneath her, scratching the stone with its tiny and unfortified claws. One of the better ones, then. Of course; they were the only ones who would have known to flee while the chance was given them.

The thing sprang upon her. She hissed as she felt its claws sink into the softer flesh under her legs, grasping not as a child to its mother but as a predator to its victim. Its small fangs struggled to pierce her underside. Again she hissed and it screeched in response, fighting her, scratching her, attempting to stab her with its underdeveloped sting. She was not frightened; she was not intimidated. This pitiful creature could do no harm to her. 

She shook her tremendous bulk and the thing fell away from her, landing on a stone precipice several feet below. To her vague astonishment, it seemed uninjured. Its body was much in the form of hers, lacking only the gluttonous shape of her abdomen. At the joints of its legs and upon its narrow feet were plump claws, curved already like those of a great beast of prey. Its eyes were great in number. Its head was formed as her own; it was female, a little she-spider to rival her. 

It was her child most truly, and looking down upon it she felt stirring within her a loathing toward it such as she had never known. 

_Be gone, foul one, little one, else I devour thee now before thy time, before thy body is fattened to my liking..._

The child hissed at her once more, and, accepting its defeat, began quickly to crawl down the side of the mountain. She watched it disappear into the mists below, a tiny infant in comparison to her magnitude. And yet it had threatened her, despite its lack of strength. How suiting for a child made in her likeness. 

She granted it clemency. She would not seek it out this evening, in the first real darkness it would ever know. She would let it travel far from her, if indeed it proved so adept at defending itself. It would find mates and would produce offspring of its own, and perhaps it would even mirror her actions and devour its children, reveling in the blood of its own being as she did. It would grow fat on the low creatures of the world. And when its time was come she would find it, a veritable goddess now amongst all creation to whom Melkor himself would kneel, and she would feast upon its every fiber, swallowing all and leaving nothing to stand testimony that this child had ever lived save for the legends of itself that it left in its wake. 

Thus contenting herself with these thoughts, she descended the mountain, and went forth once again to burden the earth.

Note: Yes, the little one is Shelob. I couldn't resist. Comments are very, very welcome.


End file.
